I’m certain you meant to say developmentally disabled when you said retarded. My apologies, I just read yesterday’s comments. Somebody beat me to the collateral damage observation. Gosh, we must be getting closer to the ending to our tale. This story has been anything but predictable but it seems like before we close the curtains, we need a Carol/Shanna smackdown (After we find out who comes out on top in the Centurion/Ackerfeldt match) also Taro needs to take some licks. Then there are the loose ends such as
what appears to be yet another hungry incorruptible beast emerging from our favorite cult’s inter-dimensional portal. Perhaps a little closure on HR Dedalus, Ferris arm version and Mysterious tube avatar.

I don’t like that explaination. The other tube avatars didnt need to have flesh offering sent into cyberspace by voodoo. But then again the other immersed players werent simultaneously living life as usual outside of the tubes as was HR. When I said a little closure, I was understating, the 5 need to be found out by the authorities and decanted, people need to be prosecuted at Hurricaine. Any way if the Voodoo Arm version and the Floating in his Undies version were to ever meet face to face it would upset the natural balance kinda like what happens in time travel science fiction.

Are you sure they didn’t? Who knows what HR did behind the scenes. Though it is also possible the offering was to ensure he kept his memories and not wind up the same as the five did, or something. That was my interpretation at least.

Not bad. No I am not sure they didn’t. And the natural balance sure has been turned upside down anyway. Your explaination makes Gorram Batguy’s idea complete. I really don’ t have an idea of what to make of this matter. Gonna be sorry to see this strip end.

Oh, there are good literary precedents.
In a similar situation in a story by Lois McMaster Bujold, a character felt the need to grab a spanner, muttering something about needing to adjust a seat’s attitude. Or maybe adjusting an attitude.

Not challenging/disagreeing, but is there any evidence from previous updates that such was the case? I remember the bits about Taro claiming only he understood all his father’s plans, about Bandit’s Gnome Adventurer Team getting their hands on the plans, etc. However, Franzingtonand Micholuszek, despicable as they are, have proven themselves capable of a bunch of technological feats- meaning that even if the plan originally would not have worked they may have succeeded.

yeah… i am thinking that the tank has a reserve of energy big enough to shoot multiple times and haul that 50 metric tons of steel and brass…
if it goes off, that would make Chernobyl look small in comparison!

1. Somehow, this update makes me respect his father a little bit for that political and strategic wisdom. I admire people who understand and value restraint. Of course, that His Grace Iwatani was so despicable means the little respect he earned from me is trying to fill a massive pit of disdain.
2. For people who read Order of the Stick: So, Taro is Guilded Age’s version of Xykon? This update reminds me of Xykon’s “Power Speech”. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html

I respectfully disagree. Although both Xykon and Taro say something along the lines of “Power is Power” in their respective monologues, they aren’t talking about the same thing at all.

Taro is talking about the purpose of power, Xykon doesn’t even touch on that, he is referring solely to the “source”. Xykon’s entire point was that there are no shortcuts to power, a point that Taro certainly has no patience for.

And that all forms of power are equally valid, even if common ‘wisdom’ disdains that power. Xykon is bastard of the nth degree, but he’s savvy. He showed that while V’s obsession with arcane power at any cost would be his downfall, that real, reliable power is boring, even ‘everyday.’

1. You know I was going to make that exact comment. I certainly didn’t like Iwatani, I thought he was evil and manipulative. But at least he had a work ethic. At least he thought long term and worked for the benefit of the country, even if it was only to bring himself more power.

Taro on the other hand just uses whatever he has on hand without regard for long term consequences. If he hadn’t inherited the fruits of his father’s schemes he never would have gotten anywhere close to this level of power. And really driving this tank is probably going to be the pinnacle of his life. Even if he survives I doubt he’s going to come out of this ruling whatever is left of Gastonia or even his house. Whereas if he had a little bit of patience and let his father live, Iwatani might actually have managed to maneuver through this and at least retain a decent position at the end.

2. As Sergei said Xykon was referring to how you got power not how it is used. Xekon at least earned all his power legitimately. And while certainly evil has long term plans that put Taro to shame.

Personally, I’m wondering if Bandit manages to break in. Or if the really smart goblin dude manages to find a weakness to exploit. But whoever takes down the Ultimate Engine, I doubt it’ll be Frigg – she’s busy with the Silver Centurion.

Although, it could be Frigg-by-proxy, if she somehow manages to get the Centurion to switch sides and take down the Engine.

Eh… I still like the story but I really wish you hadn’t made this kid the main villain on the Gastonian front. I mean he’s just so cartoonish in his evil and so DUMB in many of his decisions that I just don’t find him intimidating in the slightest.

I’m thinking: since a few chapters ago, the story has been moving faster to wrap everything up in 50 chapters total. And it feels like Taro usurping power is part of that. His dad would’ve been a much bigger challenge for the rebels.

Taro, for all his bragging, isn’t half as smart, and he’s not planning ahead. He lives for the temporary rush of power abuse, and he thinks any problem can be solved with more power abuse. At this rate, the citizens are going to roll out the red carpet when the “enemies” are at the gate.

Yep. Taro being the ruler of Gastonia means that they roll up the gameworld conflict and turn to the real threat, which the Peacekeepers have already realized and the Champions are 9/10 of the way convinced of.

I am really hoping for a huge single panel, where this little SH*T and his war machine ( and it’s inventors. ) go. KABOOM! In huge die-hard movie type glory, and we see him have all his power-mad karma come back and bite him in his nasty evil little a$$!

And this is why it’s dangerous to let your government get too powerful. Eventually a Taro comes along, and then it doesn’t matter how full of sunshine and rainbows and happiness the previous leaders were.

I don’t know . . .. Taro is bad, but he’s just the result of the equation that Gastonia had been building on the backs of its people and victims for generations.

A proud Gastonian would be taken aback and shocked, I’m sure, ‘how did this happen? Where did this come from?’ . . . But a rebel would just see the nastiness that was always below the surface behind polite smiles and poisonous policy.

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” – George Orwell, 1984

Where we realise that as much as Iwatani was rotten to the core, he was a talented politician who at least had a significant group of people’s best interests at heart, if only because he knew that would keep him in power. Beware of mavericks who tell you that such establishment political swamp needs to be “drained” and who offer themselves, inexperienced, self-serving, power-hungry narcissists as the alternative.

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